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[OPINION] Pa Adebanjo: A Celebration Of Death

Published

8 months ago

February 17, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

Afenifere leader, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, died on Friday. He would have been 100 years old if death had not been too fast; if it had waited three more years plus two months. An age of almost a century is a huge haul, a boon anywhere. Yet, when the 96/97-year-old’s death was announced four days ago, the world gasped and agonized over his departure. In courage and in principle, he was vintage wine, the older the better. He lived well and strong; he ended very well and very strong. He never lost his voice – literally and as a metaphor. In a season when his mates followed the scent of soup, he followed his conscience. He comported himself so well that at his exit, it has not been difficult to say of him that he delivered what he carried successfully with the chinaware unbroken.

In the days of our ancestors, when a mainframe cracked, got broken and fell, the cry was “ayé ti bàjé” (the world is spoilt). As he was ebbing away, Adebanjo was utterly shocked at how our world found it very easy to accommodate and excuse evil. He raised his voice, he shouted and cried himself hoarse; regime hailers raised their noses against him and his warnings. He didn’t keep quiet; no one could shut up or shout down the voice of his gong. But before our very eyes, ayé ti bàjé. Just as the genius of George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ warned, there is no more curiosity about anything ennobling, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures are progressively destroyed; a flood of intoxication of power increases and is constantly growing, not subtler now but bolder. Boots stamping on the human face enjoy the thrill of victory; they savour the sensation of trampling on the helpless till eternity. What Orwell wrote as the picture of the future is here. The earth has lost what made it see.

Two years ago when he turned 95, the newspaper I edit asked Chief Adebanjo if he was going to take a break when he turned 100. He was quick to answer with a resounding No. He said “That is not possible. Until I am buried in the grave, I won’t stop and I took that from Chief Awolowo. When we asked him: ‘are you going to retire?’, he would say ‘no, when I’m in the grave I will still be tall fighting’. We didn’t know what he meant at that time. He is dead now but is there any day people don’t mention the name ‘Awolowo’? Oh, Awolowo did this! Oh, Awolowo did that! That is what I’m doing. I’m a lone ranger now. ‘He doesn’t like Tinubu’; ‘He is against a Yoruba man’; ‘He is against Igbo man.’ I don’t go the popular way that is not good.” That was his answer and he was not done; it was not his last answer.

He said he was “a lone ranger now.” When a man declares that he is not afraid to walk alone, watch him. You remember Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’? The traveller is confronted with two roads diverged in a yellow wood. He examines the two roads carefully, then takes “the one less travelled by.” The traveller says that decision “has made all the difference.” Standing alone can be very lonely, but it always makes a difference. The pain of Adebanjo’s death is palliated by the courageous way the dead lived his life.

The Yoruba, in elaborate ways, celebrate the death of the aged who lived and died well; we call it ‘òkú síse.’ And that is what I am doing here. As we celebrate life, it becomes necessary to celebrate the death of death also. In ‘The Great Refusal’, Maurice Blanchot is ecstatic that “we have lost death” I read Blanchot and the defeat of death. I read Michael Purcell’s ‘Celebrating Death’, a piece on death, its management and its overcoming. I skimmed Adebanjo’s ‘Telling It As It Is.’ I took a long look at the life the departed lived, the grassy road he took and the global applause he got at his full time. I agreed with those who described death as life maker.

Whether its victim be young or old, death’s pang is painful. Man loves and celebrates birth; he rejects and outlaws death. Yet, birth and death are two experiences that unite all that live. Like the skies and the ocean, life feeds death; death feeds life. My Christian friend donates a verse: “Unless a wheat grain falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.” And, to this, I add a verse from the Qur’an: “A sign for them is the dead land which we bring to life and from which we bring forth grain of which they eat.”

Death is so final and I wonder why. Nothing we do reboots the game after the final whistle. Ancient Egyptians thought they could defeat death with denial. To achieve immortality, they invented the science of keeping their dead intact forever. In museums of the west today are bodies of Egyptians who died thousands of years ago. They called the process mummification. Read Herodotus, father of history; read Diodorus of Sicily, universal historian. Move further west, in the southern desert of the science and tech capital called California in the United States is an aboriginal tribe of Indians who harnessed death to serve life: Zuni Indians made masks and carved images. Their motive was to ‘save’ the life of their dead in perpetuity. Our ancestors did that too. They called theirs Egúngún, a masked construct for social immortality. But mummies and masks are what they are – lifeless fillers of life.

Egyptians and North American Indians were not alone in the search for life without death. Ancient Mesopotamia was celebrated as the land between two rivers (Tigris and Euphrates). The Arabs call it Al Jazirah (The Island). In Mesopotamia and Babylonia, its southern neighbour, were people who worked round the clock in search of magic to overcome death. The magical formulas were carefully encased in capsules of words called poems. Some of the arts survived the ravages of age, fires and flood; many went with the ruins of wars and the eccentricity of monks, kings and clerics. Among the survivors is the Epic of Gilgamesh where we read of the king of Uruk who risked his all to crack the code of immortality, the secret of eternal life. This king moved from one end of the world to the other end; he was in search of what would end death. And, in the end, the royal who was seeking eternal life got the eternal truth: “Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands.”

The MAMSER man, Professor Jerry Gana, famously said in the mid to late -1980s that “if you are a director, direct well…” For several decades, Chief Adebanjo was a director of the Nigerian Tribune. I observed his excellence displayed on that board; he protected that legacy institution with the attentive eyes of a mother hen. At his departure last Friday, the board of directors of the Tribune was more than grateful to a man who was a guardian angel. A fitting tribute, effusive in thanks and appreciation, was competently penned by the chairman of the newspaper house, Ambassador Olatokunbo Awolowo Dosumu. The piece says it all on how well the nonagenarian discharged his duties to the 75-year-old newspaper of his leader. I quote from the board’s message of appreciation:

“A man of remarkable dedication, Chief Adebanjo never treated any board meeting with levity. Even in his advanced years, he was always prompt and consistent, undeterred by long journeys, considering absence from meetings a personal failing. His resoluteness, passion, and absolute concern for issues affecting ANN Plc were both admirable and infectious. To him, the Tribune was more than a newspaper—it was a sacred legacy. He often declared: ‘I want to be able to give my Leader, when I see him, a good report about our newspaper, the Nigerian Tribune.’ His love for the Tribune was unconditional and absolute. He would accept nothing less than excellence in preserving the ideals and values upon which the paper was founded.” No testimonial can be better than that from a board chairman to a departed board member.

Some people don’t read newspapers; they study them – for various reasons. Chief Adebanjo studied the Tribune and had appropriate words for whatever he observed on its pages. On more than one occasion, he sent nice words to the editors – or he complained if something displeased him. Our last encounter was at the secretariat of the Awolowo Foundation in Lagos. Frail in body, strong in spirit and resolve, he looked round and asked “Olagunju dà?” (Where is Olagunju?). My colleagues pointed me out. I greeted him; he looked deeply into my eyes, then smiled broadly. That was all, and it was last year.

I have spent the last couple of years meticulously studying him and his mates. He stood out in courage and forthrightness. He was a very reliable and effective Yoruba leader who was not blinded to truth and justice by his Yorubaness. He spoke just and did just no matter whose ox was gored. He was an akekaka who demanded what the concerned would do if they heard his hash words. He gave his autobiography an unusual, audacious title: ‘Telling It As It Is’. He called rose rose and bullshit bullshit. Even his enemies know that he was not afraid to be unpopular. He never hesitated to take a stand in support of anyone or any cause or group that deserved justice. That is the meaning of godliness. “It is joy to the just to do judgment.” That is a verse in the Bible. “Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin”. Another from the Bible. And he was a Christian who read his scriptures, believed, lived and acted according to the teachings of his religion. I wish all who claim Christianity read and act those verses. And, if you are a Muslim, like me, it is in our Qur’an too that all believers should “be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allah, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives.”

It is significant that those Adebanjo worked against agreed at his death that he was a champion of justice and democracy. I read that in President Bola Tinubu’s tribute on Friday. There is power in being positively different. In the Tribune interview I quoted earlier, Chief Adebanjo declared that the progressives’ political family he belonged to always charted a path for the future. He reminisced that “by the time Chief Awolowo founded the Action Group, how many people followed him in the Western Region, including the obas? Some of them are talking now; how many of them followed Chief Awolowo? It was when we won election in 1951 and we began to do the wonders of development and education and everything, everybody now started saying ‘all of us are Afenifere’…Those were the days of politics of principle. It was the principles and manifesto that we used to defeat the NCNC in the Western Region. We never killed ourselves; we never did murder.” He lamented today’s erosion of values, declaring that “that was why I could not celebrate my 95th birthday.”

He will also not participate in the celebration of his centenary in 2028. Death has said no to that. Victorian public schoolmaster and Anglican hymnographer, Reverend Gerald Moultrie (1829-1885), wrote “Brother, now thy toils are o’er.” John Ellerton (1826-1893), another reverend gentleman of genius, took it further from that verse with his version: “Now, the labourer’s task is over…” All tasks were over for Chief Adebanjo on Friday in Lagos; and all his battle days past. The voyager has landed on the farther shore, and, now, in God’s glorious keeping we leave the labourer to rest, to sleep. May his great soul enjoy the Lord’s repose.

News

ASUU Declares Two-week Strike, Orders Members To Down Tools On Monday

Published

12 hours ago

October 12, 2025

Editor

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has announced the commencement of a two-week ‘total strike’ and ordered its members to withdraw their services across the country, effective 12:01 a.m. on Monday.

ASUU President, Prof. Christopher Piwuna, disclosed this at a press conference in Abuja on Sunday.

The development comes after the two-week ultimatum issued to the Federal Government to address their long-standing demands expired.

Prof. Piwuna expressed dismay that nothing significant had happened since it issued the two-week ultimatum. “Government has been asking for time with nothing concrete on the ground to resolve it,” he said.

According to him, the decision to embark on the total strike was reached after several rounds of meetings with government representatives ended without any tangible commitment.

He noted that the union had exhausted all avenues for dialogue and patience, emphasising that the strike action was the last resort to compel the government to fulfil its promises.

He further explained that the union had consistently shown restraint in order not to disrupt the academic calendar, but the government’s insensitivity had left them with no alternative.

“Consequently, all branches of ASUU are hereby directed to withdraw their services with effect from midnight (12:01 a.m.) on Monday, 13 October 2025. The warning strike shall be total and comprehensive as agreed at the last NEC meeting,” he said.

He also called on well-meaning Nigerians, civil society organisations, and the media to prevail on the Federal Government to address the lingering issues once and for all. The union warned that unless concrete steps are taken within the two-week period, it will not hesitate to extend the strike indefinitely. “This struggle is not just for university lecturers; it is for the soul of public education in Nigeria,” Prof. Piwuna declared.

The seven-point demands include: re-negotiation of the 2009 ASUU-FGN agreement; sustainable funding of universities; revitalisation of universities; victimisation of ASUU members in Lagos State University (LASU), KSU (now Prince Abubakar Audu University), and Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO).

Others are outstanding 25–35 per cent salary arrears; promotion arrears for over four years; as well as third-party deductions.

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Nigerian Engineers applaud Gov. Mohammed’s $5bn Investment Deals

Published

13 hours ago

October 12, 2025

Editor

The Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), Bauchi state chapter has commended Gov. Bala Mohammed for organising the maiden international investment summit that recorded a 5 billion Dollars investment deal in the state.

It could be recalled that Prof. Murtala Sagagi, Chairman of the Summit Planning Committee, disclosed at the end of the summit that it recorded over 5 billion Dollars investment deals and 47 Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) signed.

He said that the agreements signed covered agriculture, solid minerals, power, infrastructure, and ICT sectors, adding that one of the MoUs translated into a concrete investment deal worth 1 billion dollars, which would become operational before the end of 2025.

Speaking with newsmen on Sunday, Engr. Abdulkarim Hassan, Chairman, NSE, Bauchi state chapter, congratulated the state government for organizing and the successful completion of the economic and investment summit.

According to him, the summit has also showcased Nigerian engineers’ professional prowess to the world as the newly constructed International Conference Centre (ICC) where the summit was held was built by a Nigerian construction company.

He expressed confidence in the governor for engaging Nigerian engineers to do the job, saying “the feeling is mutual because if he didn’t have confidence in us, he would have engaged foreign engineers to do the work.

“We extend our profound
congratulations to the governor on the successful completion of the Bauchi
Investment Summit.

“This summit was not merely an event, it was a clear demonstration of his visionary leadership and unwavering commitment to transforming Bauchi State into a prime destination for investment.

“The quality of delegates, the insightful discussions, and the tangible commitments secured during the summit have set a new benchmark for economic engagement in the North-East and other
regions in Nigeria.

“As professional engineers, we were particularly encouraged by the strong emphasis placed on infrastructure, industrialisation, and technological development, which are key pillars that will
drive sustainable growth,” he said.

Hassan added that the success of the summit has laid a robust foundation for attracting the capital necessary to execute the ambitious infrastructural projects required for the state’s development.

He expressed the readiness of the NSE, Bauchi branch to partner with the state government by offering its professional expertise and technical support to ensure that the outcomes and MoUs from the summit translated into sustainable reality for the people of Bauchi State.

News

OPINION: Oshiomhole In A Fight Between The Elephant And The Pit

Published

23 hours ago

October 12, 2025

Editor

By Tony Erha

‘Okuo imose”, “no fight is attractive” – all fight is ugly, according to the Edo people. If a fight doesn’t pluck the teeth it would drip the noise of red blood. That is why pundits were apprehensive and had to caution Dangote Refinery and the Petrol and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) to a sound reasoning, over the sack of 800 of its workers by Dangote, which was followed by a strike action that was later called-off. The fisticuff was intensified as the National Union of Petroleum and Gas Workers of Nigeria (NUPENG), joined the spat by supporting PENGASSAN.

Like the American freestyle wrestling, where partakers fight with anything they lay their hands upon, a melee, a-free-for-all in which no one seems to know the real opponents. The fallout of the Dangote and PENGASSAN fight has unsettled Nigerians. The Benins would say “ama re fi ekpa arie gb’ ihue”; “the fisticuffs hadn’t started when the nose bled blood”. For the hapless consumer public is still at the mercy of the raging feud after the settlement. Indeed, the grass suffered where two elephants fought dirty. Buyers of Dangote products are still groaning under a surge of cooking gas price, from about N1,000 to N3,200 per kg.

Dangote Refinery’s kingpin, Aliko Dangote, who has huge investment monies flowing in his veins, vowed to a showdown with the PENGASSAN and NUPENG. Do not take my calmness for cowardice; Aliko seemed to have said, flinging his hat into the ring. “…There is no fight I have never won…” he boasted, whereas he actually won several and lost some, in the monopoly business with fellow competitors.

It was a rivalry fight between the Elephant and the Pit, when the Elephant arrogates to being the largest land animal; and the Pit boastful he is the hugest depth in the ground. The Pit threatens to swallow the Elephant and the Elephant determined to cover up the Pit. Finally on the encounter, the Pit that swallows the Elephant wouldn’t swallow more animals, nor will the Elephant live to swallow another pit.

In wrestling and boxing of exchange of punches and slams, America’s loquacious president and all-time wrestling and boxing promoter, Donald Trump, is well-known. One of the memorable grim and tricky fights of the tempest Trump was when he dragged his fellow promoter from the ringside to the dais, and beckoned on others to instantly shave his head, to the wild delight of wrestling fans across the globe. Realising that he had truly missed out from his rasmatazz in promoting competitive boxing and wrestling, an intoxicating Trump had recently arranged for a cage-wrestling showdown to mark one of his official events in a US presidential venue. When a lion king thirsts for the blood and flesh of prey, as he no longer go hunting, he claws to his own tongue to a consolatory leak of his own blood to quench his lust for blood.

Adams Aliu Oshiomhole, Nigeria’s former labour leader and ex-governor of Edo State, was dragged into the fight with his comment that PEGASSAN erred declaring a strike action without a second thought for the majority poor, who were bound to suffer the strike’s consequences. PENGASSAN and NUPENG thereby saw Oshiomhole as entering the fight arena as in ‘Enter the Dragon’, an epic film in which Chuck Norris; a famous kickboxer sorted it out with Bruce Lee, the late iconic martial artiste. It was somewhat absurd for NUPENG to point menacingly at Oshiomhole, declaring him a ‘persona non grata’ and placed a ban on him from all NUPENG’s activities, whereas the oil union was only one amongst the over 41 affiliate unions that constituted his command of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), with him as its two term president.

Now, Oshiomhole seems better placed having resumed his pro-people stand, with his current valuable contributions to it in the Senate’s chamber. But NUPENG is irritated that one of their own could attempt to stop the mongoose from killing the snakes that had all along been killed for gains and superiority sakes. Do the organised labour trust Oshiomhole, vice versa? It’s likened to the crusading music of the late musician Joseph Osayomore; “Who know man naim dey kill man” (one’s enemy is his friend). Although Oshiomhole left active labour activism about two decades ago, he’s probably the same ‘adamant Adams’ who knows the strength and pitfalls of regimental unionism, where men in khaki are soldier ants.

Why will NUPENG, led by William Akporeha, its president, be so unfair banning their former leader from speaking in their public fora, knowing that speaking in the function of the organized labour was the most effective pills he takes to get well?

Oshiomhole may not be a ringside promoter to Dangote and his mercantile, in the fight-to-finish with the PENGASSAN and NUPENG warlords, as he was accused of, nor for a ravaging workers union, than for a weary public that is a usual butt of undue strikes by insensitive workers’ and endless monopoly by businesses. A suspicious PENGASSAN and NUPENG, even though are rightly condemned for anti-people stand, by their inept strike, might have made a valid point that leaders, whose words sometimes (if not often) conflict with the good examples they preach, set the bad example for others to follow.

In a game of survival, like the odd one currently faced by the Super Eagles, in their bid to qualify for the world cup, a Gernot Roy, Nigeria’s former coach, who was booted out, and now leading the national team of the Republic of Benin, would open Nigeria’s football secrets to his newest side, as NUPENG also think their leaders are to Dangote. And is an irony that Gernot Roy is a decider of the fate of Nigeria, in the Super Eagles final match with the Benin team for the world cup carnival.

Like Trump, Oshiomhole is ‘very slippery’ as he has in common a showmanship, raw courage and the resilience of a marathoner. Oshiomhole is ‘a giant’ who’s physical and determined. Sufuyan Ojeifo, a prolific writer and journalist, once called him ‘dynamite that comes in pieces’; while I add ‘dynamite that turns a mass into pieces’. For a man who trains so rigorously, and does drills which most young men can hardly do, I was terrified when Oshiomhole, unlike a pugilist promoter in a prematch talk-show, angrily warned Reuben Abati, the Arise TV presenter, that he would punch him to puff-puff’ (swollen pie), with a black-eye and calluses, for slandering him.

If the fight between the Dangote petroleum outfit and the oil unions was in the interest of the public, and not for their selfish interests, all wouldn’t be bothered. Union workers usually orchestrate strike actions, only when it comes to their welfare, whilst staple oil derivative products are still beyond reach , notwithstanding that Nigeria is one of the leading oil producing countries of the world, that are starved of its products.